Talk:Kafr Misr

A fact from Kafr Misr appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 January 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that artifacts uncovered in Kafr Misr, an Arab village located to the south of Mount Tabor, Israel, attest to Jewish, Christian and Muslim habitation over the centuries?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/January.

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"hundreds, even thousands of years"[edit]

The lead states "The current inhabitants of Kafr Misr include those who have lived there for hundreds, even thousands of years, while others...". This is cited to the Bustan al-Marj Regional Council website. This is an extraordinary claim, and requires serious sources, not the history page written by the regional council. Basically, the only way to prove this would be perform genetic tests on current inhabitants and on skeletons from thousands of years ago. I see no sources in that Council history page.

Unless a serious RS can be provided for this very strong claim, it needs to be removed. Just attributing it to the council won't do - if anyone want to read their claims, they have a website. We should not be repeating questionable claims. okedem (talk) 08:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the one source I've been able to find so far states that the village was founded by Egyptian immigrants in the 19th century, hence the name. okedem (talk) 09:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Bustan Al Marj Regional council website is a reliable source for information about Kafr Misr. The information should be attributed to it. People can determine for themselves if they find that information to be credible or not. Tiamut^talk 10:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So you're saying you don't have any serious source for this unlikely claim. okedem (talk) 12:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The source is ok, but it needs to be rephrased. Now it sounds as if the inhabitants lives on and on and on, "for hundreds, even thousands of years" -which is an extraordinary claim, indeed. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.135.15.122 (talk) 12:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing that out. I've rephrased in a way I think deals with your concern. Tiamut^talk 13:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@Okedem, I don't consider Adrian Room, author of Place Names of the World, a more serious source than the Bustan Al-Marj Regional Council when it comes this subject. Both views should be included. Its not so extraordinary for villages in Palestine to have been inhabitated for thousands of years. Quite common actually. And given the archaeological remains found in teh village which attest to Jewish, Christian and Muslim habitation, that claim gains further credibility (at least in my eyes). Tiamut^talk 13:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Palestine has been continuously inhabited for many thousands of years. Excavations in Tel aviv found an 8,000 year old home, for instance. As I wrote in the lead, the site has been inhabited for very long.

However, this does not imply that there are the same people. Palestine was conquered time and again by various peoples, and at each time some part (sometimes most) of the population was killed or exiled. Even if not, sites are sometimes abandoned for various reasons (depleted land, water issues, disease, etc). A site can be abandoned for a hundreds years, with a new settlement established by completely different people. Just as the people currently inhabiting Tel Aviv cannot be said to be the descendants of the residents of that 8,000 year old home, we cannot say the current inhabitants of Kafr Misr are directly related to the communities there thousands of years ago.

We have no evidence that the regional council website was written by any sort of expert on the subject. For all we know, it was written by some clerk in his spare time. The council is controlled by politicians, with their own interests, not impartial experts. The claim of continuous habitation is not extraordinary. The claim of direct relation (same people) is. How do you prove that? How do they know this is true? This is a strong claim, and it requires strong evidence.

(Oh, and "Kaft" was of course a typo, thanks). okedem (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1799-map: name[edit]

The http://www.bustanelmarg.muni.il/, under "Kufur Masser", or "Kafr Misr", states that "In historical maps from 1799, the village was called "Mavela" which means beauty."

Well, I assume they refer to the Pierre Jacotin, 1826-map. But doesn´t that map call the place for "Mebhel"? Or am I looking at the wrong place?? Huldra (talk) 15:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm ... all I can say is that "v" and "b" (or "w") are commonly substituted for another, as there is no "v" sound in Arabic. I can't account for the discrepancy there though. Perhaps there is another 1799 map? Tiamut^talk 16:38, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I haven´t heard of any other detailed map from that period (but ask Zero). Btw; does "Mebhel" mean anything special in Arabic? Huldra (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. The whole name thing here is really strange. Kafr Masr seems to an ancient name (Kafr is an old Semitic word for village and Masr an equally old word for an area). The Cursader form Kaphar Mazre is obviously a permutation of that Semitic original. How the place came to be called Mavela or Mebhel for a short time in the 18th century is beyond me, and its even weirder that it readopted its old name in the 19th century. Gotta love these Palestine puzzles! Tiamut^talk 19:07, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Coming back to this question, the paper of Karmon on the Jacotin map (1799) agrees that it is marked there as "Mebhel". I presume that "Mavela" is just the result of moving "Mebhel" into Arabic and back, and I'm not sure that the web page is very reliable. Meanwhile, I found that Hutteroth lists it as a 1596 locality Misrasafa (z42 on p190). This is confirmed by Grootkerk's Gazetteer (p305) which also lists Kafr Misr as an Ottoman name of the 16th century. Grootkerk says that he based his Ottoman column on Hutteroth, a PhD thesis of Rhode, and "maps of the Israel Atlas (1956-1964)". If the name "Misr" was attached prior to the modern period, it casts doubt on the story of its modern adoption. There is also the opposite possibility: the modern name may have misled people trying to identify old names. A puzzle indeed. Zero^talk 04:16, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Name: regional council website as source; Jacotin.[edit]

There are or were several "Kafr Misr" in Israel/Palestine, as several sites were resettled by Egyptians (Morris p. 17).

I was confused by what Wiki presents as the Palestine section of the Jacotin map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Jacotin%27s_1799_survey%2C_extract_showing_Palestine.png), which doesn't show any Mebhel in the area. That tallies well with Karmon p. 247, where he lists Misr among the villages omitted from the map by Jacotin. Without solving this dilemma, I'm just guessing that Jacotin did a survey, which was used to create more than one map, of which not all contain Mabhel. Maybe.

The regional council website is such a substandard non-source that it cannot be used at all. As of now, several claims are based only on it:

The Necho II fairy tale
The Crusader name Kaphar Mazre
"Mebhel which means beauty". In a quick search, I couldn't find an Arabic word resembling "mebhel" with such a meaning.

None of this can be left standing unless there are reliable sources found which say the same. Arminden (talk) 20:33, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To editor Arminden: Please see the section above this one, which includes a portion of the Jacotin map that shows Mebhel (also in Arabic). It is in the correct place around 190/228. I believe you are looking at the wrong entry in Karmon; it is on page 167 in the first paper (Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1960), pp. 155-173). Zero^talk 01:45, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To editor Zero0000: I did look at the map section you have placed here, that's exactly why I wrote what I did. How else can you explain the Wiki version, also presented as "the" Jacotin map? And Karmon published his analysis in 3 parts: I and II in #3 of the journal (contains p. 167), and part III in #4 (contains p. 247). Cannot find a common denominator w/o spending more time on it than I have already. Arminden (talk) 08:25, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Arminden: I understand now. The map at Commons is an abridged version of the full map, which covers Palestine in five sheets. The full map has many more villages than the abridged map. The portion in the previous section comes from the full map and shows Mabhel at the same place where PEF shows Kefr Misr. I can't explain why Karmon lists Kefr Misr as Mebhel in one paper and missing in another. Kefr Kama has the same problem. Zero^talk 10:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kama is possibly the indirect explanation. Read the history section. The Circassians were settled by the authorities in 1878, and it was only them in the village in 1187. The previous population and village name were either intentionally discontinued, or the people had left before 1878. The khirbet phenomenon so well known, which I've mentioned again and again, here possibly helped by a push from above. Both could have happened at Misr too. Different clans, let alone etnic groups, mixing in one village seems to have hardly been happening in the 19th c. I just read about a region in Transylvania where the local count brought in Swabians from Germany and in several cases emptied some villages of Romanians to make place for them. 18th and 19th c. Not uncommon at all. Arminden (talk) 14:41, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting that Rhode (The Administration and Population of the Sancak of Safad in the Sixteenth Century, 1979, p88) reads the name in the 16th-century tax registers as Kafr Misr rather than Misrasafa. The handwriting in those lists is often hard to decipher. If Rhode is correct, the name Kafr Misr in the 19th century was a return to an old name rather than a new name. Zero^talk 01:37, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]